In the same vein as an early Coen Bros crime yarn or a blood-stained Jeremy Saulnier shoot-em-up, Matthew Pope’s Blood on Her Name is a homegrown working-class tale of bungled domestic criminality and the hefty price of conscience. With similarities to homegrown crime fiction like Blue Ruin, Cold in July, Calibre, and A Simple Plan, Pope’s Blood on Her Name begins with accidental death and quickly spirals beyond the realm of control.

Launching immediately into the aftermath of an accidental slaying, Pope’s film begins haltingly. By opening the film mise-en-scène with protagonist and accidental killer Leigh (Bethany Anne Lind) standing over the battered, bloodied and unidentified body of a mysterious man, Blood on Her Name answers the who, where, and with what of the crime without providing the why. The screenplay from Pope and co-writer Don M. Thompson addresses the psychology of Leigh by exploring the duality of her motivations and her reaction, as she wants to conceal the crime from the police but feels too guilty to toss the man’s corpse into a body of water. She opts to instead drop the wrapped up bag of man meat off at his family’s house.

Leigh’s response is wholly human: at once, empathetic and undeniably dumb. Nary a single decision that Leigh makes going forward – from involving other people, to half-baked kidnappings, and onward to wholly avoidable confessions – helps to contain the fallout post- covering up the killing. In most respects, Leigh’s worsening circumstances is the symptom of her conscience and in that capacity, it’s hard to fault her clumsy approach to her crime or her highly-emotional attempt at problem-solving. This is not the work of a calculated killer but the mess of a single mom with blood on her hands in way over her head.

As the stakes escalate and more friends and foes find themselves sucked into the messy vortex of Leigh’s crime, Blood on Her Name remains an even-paced character-oriented thriller, carving out a name for writer-director Matthew Pope as a patient (sometimes to a fault) but humanist storyteller. Pope directs scenes in shadow-stricken whispers; his characters abjectly fail to cope with the circumstances they find themselves in, their grasp on the situation panicky, their decision-making slapdash and hysterical, and Pope’s filmmaking reflects this panic and indecision by sitting with the consequences.

The overwhelming sense of unyielding escalation and developing chaos lends the feature a sloppy authenticity reminiscent of greats like Fargo, where slipshod plans slip through the fingers of their disheveled instigators. Pope’s yarn is nowhere even near the same league but represents a promising storyteller playing around with hardboiled, blue-collar crime stories and subverting the hero’s journey in a compelling chaotic manner. It’s not necessarily a very fun story, and can prove a bit heavy-handed in its dourness at times, but it’s told with purpose.

Joined by a serviceable supporting cast that includes Will Patton as her dried-up corrupt cop of a father; character actor and former Law & Order mainstay Elisabeth Röhm as the suspicious girlfriend of the murdered man; Jared Ivers as Leigh’s well-meaning son Ryan who has found himself on the wrong side of the law before; and Jimmy Gonzales as the concerned co-worker/sexually-interested confidante; this is Lind’s stage and she performs with an unnerved gusto that communicates the broken, tender, and hardened sides of Leigh’s character, often all wrapped up within the same guarded glance. She’s a momma bear staking her claim and protecting her family but there are lines she is willing to draw that prevent her from being very effective at the whole murder coverup business. You can’t begrudge Leigh her lack of killer instinct because Lind plays her as, to quote the Drive tune, “a real human being”. A real hero though, she is not.

Where Blood on Her Name lacks – an arresting, unique visual palette, great dialogue, and perfect pacing – it often makes up for in low-broiling tension and skewing of traditional narrative cliches, which really leaves the possibilities wide open for anything to happen. And when there’s already a body count before the film has even officially started, you can assume that those possibilities aren’t going to end so well for all involved.

CONCLUSION: Matthew Pope’s grimy backcountry thriller has splashes of Saulnier, Mickles, and the Coen Bros but is ripe with its own potential as well, spinning a damning web of deceit and truths for its protagonist who sees her bad decisions spiral quickly into a blood-soaked standoff.